Take Lord Worm, legendary ex-vocalist of death metal ex-legends Cryptopsy, put him in a black metal band with Frozen Shadows keyboardist Alvater, drummer Fredrik Widigs of various small projects and mysterious guitarist Dark Rage, and what do you get? An unrelenting fucking mess, that's what, that's not sure whether it wants to be war metal or depressive black metal and frequently throws both into the blender. Neither are done badly, indeed, no individual element of this album is poor, but when taken as a whole it can't help but come across as ill-fitting, lacking that ineffable something which ties a good black metal album together well. This should be as violent and compelling as black metal can be - but mostly it comes over as a soulless imitation of Anaal Nathrakh at their most dull. Of the several weaknesses which you can point to as dragging the album down, none of these are Lord Worm. We already knew that he was capable of black metal vocals from his former band's underappreciated Once Was Not album, where on Endless Cemetery the band slip into breakneck speed, Worm raising his game and delivering a demented shriek. He replicates that here with gusto, although it's hard to make out too much detail thanks to the murky production, which coats everything in a layer of fittingly depressing grime, burying the bass beyond rescue and pretty much ensuring guitars are fuzz. The first thing you'll notice about this album is the blasting drums, which are overenthusiastic without having Flo-like expertise, and drag the rest of the music along behind them whether they want to follow or not. The second is the wholly unnecessary war samples, from explosions to Hitler speeches to pig squeals - they're used a little more sparingly than may at first appear, but the front of the album is laden with them, and it is all the worse for it.

What makes this a tragedy of an album is that the roots of excellence are buried here. Opening ripper of an intro Violence Is Golden has infectious riffs, a considered tempo (fast but fitting), and great usage of an air-raid siren, let alone confirmation that Lord Worm fans will be more than happy with his rabid vocal performance. Yet the following Hunt With Murderworms, Sculpt With Flies starts to repeat itself just a little, despite some epic flourishes helped by the nicely-placed synth lines, and it's downhill from there, the songwriting erratic at best, hopelessly formulaic at worst. The keyboards, for instance, overwhelm The Gift Of The Furnace altogether, their repeated melody the main focus making the clattering rampage beneath it form a uniform blur, not helped when they're temporarily replaced by samples. And any initial enjoyment of the grandiose melodies at the start of the album soon wanes when you realise that very similar ones are used throughout, and the formula hardly changes barring an extra-long keyboard section here or there.

Tracks are generally too long at five-to-six minutes in length, which they're often poor at filling, repeating sections without the hypnotic effect this should have. Take Endziel as an example, starting with a depressive black metal riff, much slower and statelier than the eager blasting drums, which undermine the rather stately melodies to a ridiculous extent - not to mention a misguided breakdown that does, at least, briefly lead to a slower percussive backing. Thirty Seconds In The Killhouse is another; if it would limit itself to its title rather than the extra five minutes, it would have been far more effective. The nails in the coffin, ultimately, for me were the length of the album (at fifty minutes this is just a drag) and the realisation that Rage Nucléaire was originally formed in the year 2000 and has had twelve years to come up with something better. A little tragically, the material on Unrelenting Fucking Hatred would have sounded quite fresh and interesting if it was released in the early 00's, even with its repetition - in 2012 it's not unfair to expect much, much more, and although Worm fanboys will appreciate our idol being back and sounding as evil as ever, black metal fans will be indifferent at best. A real disappointment.